NREL and LBNL reports on PV system pricing

On December 4th, 2012 the US Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL, Golden, Colorado, US) and DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley, California, US) jointly released two reports looking at solar photovoltaic (PV) pricing in the United States. 

The first report looks at historical progress for PV price reductions, as well as providing future projections, finding that system prices are likely to continue to fall through 2012 and into 2013. 

The second report looks at the components of "soft" costs for PV systems.

"There is often confusion when interpreting estimates of PV system prices," said NREL Solar Technology Financial Analyst David Feldman. 

"This report helps to clarify this confusion by bringing together data from a number of different sources and clearly distinguishing among past, current and near-term projected estimates."

PV prices tracked against SunShot goal:

"Photovoltaic (PV) pricing trends: historical, recent and near-term projections" looks at progress in price reduction in relation to the goals of the DOE's SunShot program to reduce the installed cost of PV systems by roughly 75% between 2010 and 2020. This report indicates that while data sources, assumptions and methods differ between the bottom-up analysis and the reported price analysis, the results support the validity of both analyses. The report draws on multiple ongoing NREL research activities.

Presentation of DOE analysis on soft cost:

The second report, "Benchmarking non-hardware balance of system (soft) costs for US photovoltaic systems using a data-driven analysis from PV installer survey results", presents results from the first DOE-sponsored data collection and analysis of such costs. 

The report finds that these costs made up 40-50% of residential and commercial US PV prices in 2010. The study benchmarks four particular categories of soft costs, looking at customer acquisition, permitting, inspection and interconnection, installation labor, and labor associated with arranging third-party financing.

NREL and LBNL found that these costs alone comprised 23% of residential PV system prices, 17% of small commercial system prices and 5% of large commercial system prices.